Editor's Shelf

From Parameters, Summer 1997, p. 130.

When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America
is Michael J. Bennett's comprehensive treatment of the origin and early
years of the GI Bill. The final three chapters--"Coming Home,"
"Storming the Campus," and "Making Modern America"--show
how the pent-up energy of returning veterans helped to produce the suburbs,
the growth of a prosperous blue-collar work force, and other attributes
that came to characterize for many the essence of the 1950s.

The Military Center for Strategic Studies in Rome (Il Centro Militare
di Studi Strategici--Ce.Mi.S.S.) has sponsored and conducted a large number
of studies over the years on subjects relevant to Italian security. In
view of the growing importance of NATO's Southern Region (e.g., the Maghreb,
Balkans) Ce.Mi.S.S. now regularly issues précis of these reports
in English. For additional information, contact Il Direttore, Ce.Mi.S.S.,
Palazzo Salviati, Piazza della Rovere, 83, Roma, I-00165.

Three oversize works--seemingly of the coffee table variety--could not
provide a more complete look at the changing nature of soldiering if they
had been issued as a set.

. On-Site Inspections Under the CFE Treaty
provides a comprehensive account of how nations have been verifying the
reduction of conventional armed forces in Europe. Many full color photos
supplement the text; seven appendices include the treaty itself and a variety
of other useful information about on-site inspections between 1990 and
1996.

. IFOR on IFOR: NATO Peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovnia
will suggest to some a collection of stills from a TV newscast: human relations
faces and public relations narrative. Yet form and function are indeed
in balance here. Generals and privates of many of the nations supporting
the peace mission join local civilians to describe in words and images
the need for their work, its complexity, dangers, and boredom, and the
rewards associated with helping to maintain the peace.

. Black Soldier, White Army: The 24th Infantry
Regiment in Korea, from the US Army Center of Military History, tells
of a unit no better or worse prepared than its sister regiments for the
shock of combat when it was thrown into the Pusan perimeter in August 1950.
It includes courage under fire, heroism, and the debilitating effects of
racist policies soon to be abandoned by the Army. What mattered was leadership;
mutual trust and respect helped some elements of the regiment to perform
very well under difficult conditions.

It seems somehow appropriate that the Korean experience, in the drab
gray-tones of 1950s combat photography, stands in sharp contrast to the
brightly colored faces--not all happy, to be sure--in the more recent books.
That the former was truly a life and death struggle at the outset of the
Cold War is well portrayed through the pictures. Nearly a half-century
later, US and other military personnel verify the destruction of billions
of dollars worth of material produced by former adversaries in that confrontation,
while in Bosnia others describe the conditions and challenges of its successor,
the regional conflict. The faces in all three volumes testify to the enduring
need for capable and ready armed forces despite the apparent absence of
threats to national interests. -- JJM